A HISTORY OF LONDON Most of the licensed places were private houses, but ' the old theatre in Vere Street ' and ' the newly-built meeting house of Thomas Cawton' in Westminster are mentioned, and it is certain that some regular meeting- houses were described as ' the house of so-and-so.' In a very few cases, not more than half a dozen in London, a licence was refused ; one of these was on behalf of the congregation formerly ministered to by John Goodwin, a celebrated Arminian theologian and literary champion of the regicides. A curious appreciation," by an unfriendly critic, of the most conspicuous Nonconformists of this date, shows that the popular Presbyterians were Dr. Bates, Dr. Seaman, Dr. Manton, Dr. Annesley, Mr. Jenkyns, Mr. Wat- son, Mr. Calamy, Mr. West, and Messrs. Bull, Mayo, and StanclifF, ' all three partners in one great brewhouse, but men of great interest in their party, and good preachers' ; also Mr. Senior, ' much cried up by the women,' Mr. Wood- cock, and 'Mr. Baxter, the greatest person among them.' Of Doolittel, Thomas and Nathaniel Vincent, and Mr. Barham, the writer speaks contemptuously. For the Independents he has no good word ; but names as ' the heads of this party now alive ' Dr. Goodwin, Dr. Owen, Philip Nye, Joseph Caryl, George Griffiths, Thomas Brooks, and Mr. Mead. The Baptists, he says, ' are not so numerous as the former parties, yet they are a large body ' ; their chief teachers are Captain Kiffin, Mr. Knowles (i.e. Hansard KnoUys), Messrs. Harrison, Gosnold, and Northcott. The Quakers he calls ' Fifth Monarchy Men disguised ' ; he names six of their meeting-houses, and says that two others in Ratcliff and Wheeler Streets had been destroyed. There was a general unwillingness on the part of the authorities to license public halls ; applications for the Curriers' and Haberdashers' Halls were refused. But the use of Pinners' Hall was obtained not only for worship on Sunday, but for what has ever since been known as ' The Merchants' Lecture.' This was a weekly sermon to be delivered by leading Presbyterian and In- dependent ministers on Tuesday mornings, under the patronage of the chief Nonconformist merchants of the City. The lecturers have always been six in number ; those first appointed being Dr. Bates, Dr. Manton, Richard Baxter, and William Jenkyns, Presbyterians, and Dr. John Owen and John Collins, Independents.'* The lecture was continued at Pinners' Hall from 1672 to 1778 ; it was removed for a short time to Little St. Helen's, and thence to New Broad Street ; on the disuse of that meeting-house in 1844 it was trans- ferred to the Poultry Chapel; next, in 1869, to the Weigh-house Chapel, Fish Street Hill, which was demolished in 1883 ; the lecture was afterwards held at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, till 1889, then at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street ; next, from 1898 to 1906, at the Dutch Church in Austin Friars ; it has lately been transferred to Whitefield's Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road, and back to the Memorial Hall. The House of Commons having resolved by 168 votes to 1 16 that the Declaration of Indulgence was illegal,'^ it was cancelled on 7 March 1672-3. But the licences already granted were not withdrawn ; and the ' Sectaries ' still 'publicly repaired to their meetings and conventicles.' ^^ Notwithstanding the continuance of the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts, the activity of the " B.M. Stowe MS. 186 ; printed in Trans. Cong. Hist. Soc. iii. '^ W. Wilson, Hist, of Diss. Churches, ii, 250-4 ; Congregational Year Bks. 1850, &c. " Com. Journ. 10 Feb. 1672-3. " Reresby, Memoirs, 174. 380
